Venus Art Prints

Eclecticism is at the heart of Venus Art Prints .. a passion for art and design from all eras and styles - bringing it together in curated collections, with our own original collage art and photography..

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

WITH OPIUM, EUPHORIA leads the way to death. The tortures come from going against the current back toward life. A whole springtime drives the veins to madness, sweeping along ice and molten lava.

I advise the addict who has been deprived for eight days to bury his head in his arm, to glue his ear to that arm, and to wait. Upheavals, riots, factories exploding, armies retreating, flood - in the starry night of the human body, the ear bears witness to an entire apocalypse. more

.... Jean Cocteau. Detox diary

Le Poison

Wine clothes the sordid walls of hovels oldwith pomp no palace knows,evokes long peristyles in pillared rowsfrom vaporous red and gold;like sunset with her cloud-built porticoes.

And opium widens all that has no bournin its unbounded sea;moments grow hours, pleasures cease to bein souls that, overworn,drown in its black abyss of lethargy.

Dread poisons, but more dread the poisoned wellof thy green eyes accurst;tarns where I watch my trembling soul, reversedmy dreams innumerablethrong to those bitter gulfs to slake their thirst.

'..O just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for "the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel," bringest and assuaging balm;- eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath, and, to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure from blood; and, to the proud man, a brief oblivion for

Wrongs unredressed, and insults unavenged;

that summonest to the chancery of dreams, for the triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses, and confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges; thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, - beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos; and, "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep," callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties, and the blessed household countenances, cleansed from the "dishonours of the grave." Thou only givest these gifts to man; and thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium! ..'